On The Hub and Godness

I thought what Anne said about the Hub was interesting, especially her discussion on whether or not he's a God, and I'd like to expand a little more on that idea.

Semantically speaking, I don't see what there is to separate Hub from God-like status. His direct involvement in the lives of billions of people, his ability to control the fortunes of an entire planet.. he is in fact much more active, visible and identifiable than any God we've come in contact with. One could, perhaps, say that this very feature separates him from God -- that God is too much of an abstraction, and the fact that Hub can be quantified and explained keeps him from being a God, despite his omniscience and omnipotence.

There is, then, the matter of how one defines 'God'. If you adhere to a strictly classical notion of God, as being universally good, universally omnipotent, then Hub doesn't fit into the God category. His governing of the universe is more limited to human affairs; he can't bend and change the laws of physics, as we might perhaps expect God to be able to do. According to this definition, he is merely a highly-advanced technological construct.

But if you take a more humanistic outlook on the matter, and conceive of a God as any entity, either veridically existent or projected, that is believed in, trusted, or relied on by humanity (... or by Culture), then it becomes very easy to classify Hub this way.

It's kind of a small and nit-picking point, but one that interests me nonetheless.